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A Study on 3D Surface Graph Representations

Authors:
Long Hoang Nguyen
Abdullah Karim

Keywords: Scientific visualization; time series visualizations; 3D horizon graph; space reduction; underground water aquifers.

Abstract:
Surface graphs have been used in many application domains to represent three-dimensional (3D) data. Another approach to representing 3D data is making projections onto two dimensional graphs. This approach will result in multiple displays, which is time-consuming in switching between different screens for a different perspective. In this work, we study the performance of 3D version of popular two dimensional (2D) visualization techniques for time series: horizon graph, small multiples, and simple line graph. We explore discrimination tasks with respect to each visualization technique that requires simultaneous representations. We demonstrate our study by visualizing saturated thickness of the Ogallala aquifer - the Southern HighPlains Aquifer of Texas in multiple years. For the evaluation, we design comparison and discrimination tasks and automatically record result performed by a group of students at a university. Our results show that 3D small multiples perform well with stable accuracy over numbers of occurrences. On the other hand, shared-space visualization within a single 3D coordinate system is more efficient with small number of simultaneous graphs. 3Dhorizon graph loses its competence in the 3D coordinate system with the lowest accuracy comparing to other techniques. Our demonstration of 3D spatial-temporal is also presented on the Southern High Plains Aquifer of Texas from 2010 to 2016.

Pages: 21 to 27

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2017

Publication date: July 23, 2017

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2519-8645

ISBN: 978-1-61208-577-7

Location: Nice, France

Dates: from July 23, 2017 to July 27, 2017